Unusual events at airports, on airplanes

Authorities say a vibrating device that claims to fights wrinkles as it rolls over a person's face forced a Southwest Airlines flight to evacuate in New Mexico in August 2016. Police searched the plane, but no other suspicious items were found, and no arrests were made. (AP Photo/Springfield News-Leader, Valerie Mosley, File)

Passengers aboard an Air Transat flight coming from the Dominican Republic to Montreal were shocked to discover two tarantulas aboard the plane. According to CBC, flight attendants advised passengers to put on shoes and cover their legs after the loose tarantulas were spotted on the April 2016 flight. One of the spiders was captured by a passenger in-flight, while the other was recovered after the plane landed in Montreal. (Getty Images)

Air Malta shared a little love in the skies in April 2015. Flightradar24.com, a live air traffic tracking website, caught an Air Malta plane drawing two hearts in the sky via its flight path over the Mediterranean, before it returned to the island. The website posted updates on the 'love flight' to its Twitter account, which drew the attention of users from around the world. Air Malta later confirmed to the U.K.'s Sky News that a pilot and flight attendant had been married at the airport earlier in the day and were enjoying a post-nuptial flight. Read the full story here. (Flightradar24.com screenshot)

Four koalas took to the skies in Qantas Airways' business class for a posh trip from Australia to Singapore. The koalas - named Paddle, Pellita, Chan and Idalia - were sent by Australia to Singapore to mark that country's 50th independence anniversary. The airline photographed the cute foursome being served eucalyptus and other refreshments by flight attendants before they were safely returned to their specially built climate-controlled containers for the actual flight. Read the full story here. (Twitter/Qantas Airways)

A Penn State-Abington professor was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in Miami after smoking a cigarette and going on a rant about U.S.-Venezuelan relations on a flight from Nicaragua to Miami. In videos posted to YouTube by a fellow plane passenger, Karen Halnon can be seen smoking a cigarette and also rants about President Obama and oil. Halnon told New York's Daily News that the cigarette was a symbol for a smoking gun and her show of support to cigarette-smoking revolutionaries like Fidel Castro. "I know that might sound somewhat esoteric to other people, but I’m an intellectual, so that’s what I intended," she told the Daily News. (Courtesy Miami-Dade County Corrections)

A flight attendant provided passengers with a little in-flight entertainment in March 2015 when she started dancing to Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars' hit song Uptown Funk. According to the YouTube user who posted the video, the flight attendant is his sister and former break dancer. (YouTube)

Delta Airlines was forced to apologize after their Facebook page was apparently hacked. An article linking to a joke about oral sex, featuring a photo of Urechis unicinctus - a Chinese marine spoon worm - was posted to the airlines' Facebook page for about an hour before it was pulled down. Delta posted an apology for the hack to their Twitter account shortly after. (Delta Airlines Facebook)

A 29-year-old man faces charges for allegedly stealing a megaphone on a Saskatoon-bound WestJet plane Monday night. Saskatoon police say they were called by staff at Saskatoon's John G. Diefenbaker International Airport about a passenger who stole the device from the galley of the plane. Police boarded the plane after it arrived from Toronto at about 9 p.m. and arrested the suspect. Read the full story here. (Al Charest/Postmedia Network)

Photos of Mexican singer Esmeralda Ugalde sitting behind the controls of a Magnicharters plane mid-flight have gone viral -- and have cost the pilot his job. The U.K.'s Daily Mail reports the singer and a friend were let into the cockpit during a flight from Cancun to Mexico City by the unnamed pilot. Ugalde posted photos of herself holding the plane's controller and wearing the pilot's hat to Twitter, but has since deleted the images. Read the full story here. (Twitter.com/EsmeOficial)

A flight attendant who showed off her curvy body in modelling shoots has been fired by Turkish Airlines. Airline brass decided that Zuhal Sengul, 31, went a little too far in wearing far too little in a photo shoot with an Italian magazine. The head of the airline's union says Turkish Airlines is trying to "shape the company to fit its own political and ideological stance," and the full-figured Sengul, a vegan who has a black belt in karate, isn't portraying a proper image. Read the full story here. (Facebook)

On the day before American Thanksgiving, U.S. airline JetBlue made a game of picking up bags at New York's JFK Airport and adding prize panels to the luggage belt. Suitcases that landed on winning panels from the chute won their owners everything from gloves to a free round-trip flight. Read the full story here. (YouTube)

Siberian air passengers had to get out and push their plane after its chassis froze on Nov. 25, 2014. Passengers pushed the plane until it was able to turn and then a tow truck took over. The flight then took off and went smoothly. Social media was buzzing about the feat, especially after video emerged of the passengers pushing the plane. See the video here. (YouTube)

Dutch airline KLM brought some flyers to tears recently by enlisting their loved ones to write personal messages that were then left on the headrests. After scouring the departures terminal for teary goodbyes, KLM staff took friends and relatives aside and invited them to write a final surprise message that would be attached to flyers' seatbacks. Read the full story here. (YouTube)

Hey Twitter, do you know Katie? Katie from Nova Scotia, Canada? That was pretty much how a global search for an Irishman's crush started. And in a true testament to the power of the Internet, Jamie Kelly has found his airplane seatmate in a love story that's gone viral. They met on a Ryanair flight from Barcelona to Dublin last month. They hit it off and chatted the entire flight. Sparks flew. But the two became separated at the customs line, with the Irishman queuing in the EU-only lane, and Katie Moreau, of Riverport, Nova Scotia, taking the non-EU line. Read the full story here. (Twitter)

US Airways was -- eventually -- embarrassed and apologetic after tweeting a pornographic photo of a woman lying on a bed with a plane inserted into her vagina. The image link was sent to a Twitter user with the message: "We welcome feedback, Elle. If your travel is complete, you can detail it here for review and follow-up." Read the story here. (Twitter)

A U.S. airplane almost collided with an unmanned drone in March 2014 when flying in Florida, according to reports. "The pilot said that the UAS was so close to his jet that he was sure he had collided with it," an FAA official said, according to CNN. "Thankfully, inspection to the airliner after landing found no damage. But this may not always be the case." See the full video here. (Screenshot)

Two violinists broke our their instruments on the tarmac after they were asked to leave a U.S. Airways flight over a dispute on where to store the violins. Zach De Pue and Nicolas Kendall say they haven't had any issues flying with their instruments before and when they refused to store them in the cargo area, they were asked to leave the plane. Waiting for a reslution on the tarmac, the pair took out their instruments and started playing. See the video here. (YouTube)

U.S. customs inspectors at Los Angeles International Airport seized a shipment of several dozen live giant African snails, considered a delicacy in Nigeria but also voracious pests that can eat paint and stucco off houses, officials said. Read the full story here. (U.S. Border Patrol/Handout)

A Chinese traveller was detained in South Korea this weekend after trying to board a plane with a passport that had been seriously defaced by his creative four-year-old son. The child had entertained himself over the family holiday by drawing in his dad's passport with a black pen. Read the full story here. (Courtesy Weibo)

Canada Boarder Services Agency detector dog Max helped find three Mediterranean spur-thighed tortoises in a traveller's suitcase in Edmonton in May 2010. The luggage came on a flight from London, England's Heathrow Airport to Edmonton. Read the story here. (Shutterstock)

In late summer 2014, legroom wars broke out on three flights over a two week period. First, United Airlines said flight 1462 from Newark to Denver diverted to Chicago and two were passengers ejected owing to a disturbance after one of the passengers used a $22 gadget dubbed the "Knee Defender" which blocks the seat in front from reclining. Then, a Frenchman was arraigned in Boston after becoming disruptive when the passenger in front of him reclined their seat on American Airlines flight 62 from Miami to Paris. Finally, a 32-year-old woman trying to snooze on a tray table on a flight from New York to West Palm Beach, Florida became the latest offender Monday when the woman in front slammed her seat back, bashing her alleged victim's head at the end of the Labour Day holiday weekend. Read the full story here. (Shutterstock)

Resourceful drug dealers tried to smuggle 11 kg of heroin through Montreal's Trudeau Airport by sewing the drugs into imported rugs. Canada Border Services agents discovered $4 million worth of heroin after they examined a shipment of rugs from Pakistan. The drugs had been hidden inside the hand-knotted woollen fibres of the rugs. Read the story here. (Shutterstock)

It was a shock for everyone when one traveller's bag ripped open on a luggage conveyor belt at Kuala Lumpur International Airport and 95 live boa constrictors spilled out into the airport. Read the story here. (Shutterstock)

A pillow fight broke out on this August 2010 flight. The flight attendant was just as involved as the passengers! Watch the video here. (Screenshot)

Rapper Kanye West took over a Delta Airlines PA system on a November 2010 flight and performed part of his hit song "Gold Digger" for a surprised, but very receptive, audience of his fellow passengers. Watch the video here. (YouTube)

The funny in-flight safety instruction speech of a Houston-based Southwest Airlines flight attendant named Martha "Marty" Cobb went viral. "If we could pretend to have your attention for just a few moments, my ex-husband, my new boyfriend and their divorce attorney are going to show you the safety features," Cobb says during the pre-departure safety demonstration. See the video here. (YouTube)

A budget Vietnamese airline says photos of flight attendants in lingerie were leaked from a test shooting and spread online, but are not official promotional photos. VietJet Air was slammed on social media for the photos of the scantily clad ladies. Read the full story here. (Facebook)

A Transport Canada intelligence alert from November 2010 said a passenger thought to be an elderly white man who “appeared to have young looking hands” boarded a flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver, and later emerged from the washroom as an Asian man in his early 20s. After landing in Vancouver, the man claimed refugee status. Read the story here. (Canada Border Services/Handout)

A Sunwing flight bound for Cuba was turned back to Toronto Wednesday due to "two unruly female passengers," the airline says. The Varadero-bound plane, which departed Toronto at 4:30 p.m., was escorted back to Canada by CF-18s. Sunwing said in a statement that the two women drank "a significant quantity of their duty free alcohol purchase in the lavatory and lit a cigarette, triggering the smoke detector alarm. Read the full story here. (Postmedia Network)

An editor for the television show Modern Family live-tweeted her experience with "the worst person in the world" on an American Airlines flight from New York to L.A. Sunday night. The woman, identified as Nadia, was apparently quite drunk. At one point, when her seatmate asked her to turn down the volume on her movie because he could hear it through her earphones, she yelled at him, "Sorry, it's my first time not in first class." Read the full story here. (Twitter)

Authorities investigated how gun parts and bullets ended up stashed inside a four-year-old boy's Mickey Mouse doll and stuffed animals he was carrying aboard a plane in Rhode Island. The father, whose name was not released, told authorities he didn't know the weapons parts were in his son's bag. They were allowed to fly after the items were confiscated. "It appears to be the result of a domestic dispute," Airport Police Chief Leo Messier said in a statement. Read the story here. (TSA/Handout)

An Australian pilot had to make an unplanned landing only 20 minutes after takeoff after a snake slithered out of the dashboard into the cockpit. Pilot Braden Blennerhassett spotted the snake about 20 minutes after takeoff from the Darwin Airport on an Air Frontier cargo flight in April 2012. Read the full story here. (Shutterstock)

A 49-year-old Oregon man became so fed up with airport screening that he stripped naked at Portland International Airport security checkpoint, police said. Some passengers covered their own eyes, as well as their children’s, during the April 2012 incident, while others “stepped out of the screening lanes to look, laugh and take photos.” Read the full story here. (Multnomah County Sheriff's Office/Handout)

A 10-hour United Airlines flight from San Francisco to London took off without restocking one important passenger item — toilet paper. ABC News reported staff improvised and provided cocktail napkins for passengers to use in stalls when the toilet paper ran out and labelled a dispenser so passengers knew why the napkins were in the bathroom. Read the full story here. (Postmedia Network files)

A porn company has offered Air Canada pilots free porn for however long they're employed by the airline. Recently, the CBC reported Air Canada pilots have been told to stop taking porn with them into the cockpits. A memo was sent to staff last year warning of possible criminal charges or being fired for bringing inappropriate material to work. In a letter from the website Brazzers, the company offers pilots free porn. Read the full story here. (Postmedia Network)

Passengers got quite a scare Wednesday when a man on their flight sneezed and declared "I have Ebola" - as a joke. Health officials in haz-mat suits escorted the man from US Airways flight 845 Wednesday when it arrived in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, from Philadelphia. Read the full story here. (Handout)

A fight broke out at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport last week after a man began hurling homophobic slurs at another passenger in the airport's terminal. The incident was caught on video and posted to YouTube by Andrew Kennedy, who wrote in the video's description that it shows "an extremely troubled unnamed man gets upset, starts a fight and then gets taken down hard." Read the full story here. (YouTube)

If you're worried about the flight you're about to board with your charming but lung-tastic baby, take cues from the parents of Madeline and consider launching a preemptive charm offense with a goodie bag and an advance apology. The strategy did more than mollify Reddit user Ninjashares, who posted a photo of the bag on the online forum: "A baby just handed me this on my flight. I ain't mad." Read the full story here. (Imgur)

A Delta Airlines passenger caused a stir on social media when he decided to live-tweet a flight that had only one other passenger on it. The flight to New York took off with just two passengers after other flyers were re-booked on other flights due to weather related delays. See the full video here. (Twitter)

A video posted by a British TV host has gone viral for capturing the "disgusting" conditions of his pricey first class seat on British Airways. Owen Thomas said he just wanted to show others "...what first class in BA is really like." See the full video here. (YouTube)

'Hangin' With Mr. Cooper' actor Mark Curry was left fuming at an airport in Dallas, Texas in May 2015 after an airline employee randomly confronted him about carrying a loaded weapon. The actor tells TMZ.com, "(I) just walked to (the) first class Delta counter in Dallas. The first thing the lady said to me (was), 'Do you have a loaded weapon?' What? Delta, all black people don't have loaded weapons! That's the first thing she said to me at (the) first class (desk). She didn't say hello, she said, 'Do you have a weapon?' She was black...!" Read the full story here. (WENN.com)

This photo of a lizard on a tray of airplane food, reportedly taken on an Air India flight from Delhi to London, went viral and had the airline issuing a statement that it was nothing more than a hoax. Air India said it had received no complaints about a lizard surprising passengers in-flight, though one source told the Times of India that "a flight attendant got the said meal from the galley and soon after it was placed on to the tray, the passenger was heard screaming." Watch the full video here. (Twitter)

A United Airlines captain threw bullets in a trash bin accessible to passengers and later flushed them down a toilet on board a flight that he was piloting to Germany. A United spokeswoman said that the pilot should not have thrown the bullets in the toilet. She said the pilot hasn't been fired but that the incident is still under investigation. Airline spokeswoman Karen May said the pilot is allowed to carry a gun on domestic flights under a post-9-11 federal program. Read the full story here. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

A WestJet flight attendant's funny in-flight safety demonstration has made him a viral sensation. In video posted to Facebook by a Saskatchewan veterinary clinic, flight attendant Michael McAdam can be seen acting out the safety demonstration. Click here to watch the video. (Facebook)

Malaysia Airlines barred passengers from checking in baggage on flights to Paris and Amsterdam in early January 2016 due to "unseasonably strong headwinds" on a longer flight path it is taking. Malaysia Airlines said the longer flight path consumes more fuel and this, combined with "temporary unseasonably strong headwinds, is limiting the airlines' ability to carry baggage in cargo." The airline later changed the policy after social media backlash. Read the full story here. (AP Photo)

Delta Air Lines had to apologize to passengers after a confrontation between two flight attendants in January 2016 led pilots to make an unscheduled landing halfway through the trip. The Aviation Herald, a website that tracks accidents and other incidents involving planes, said Delta flight 2598 was headed from Los Angeles to Minneapolis on Jan. 22 when two flight attendants got into a fist fight and the captain decided to land in Salt Lake City. The Herald said the plane stayed on the ground for more than an hour before resuming the flight to Minneapolis. Read the full story here. (Associated Press files)

A large bulge in a man's pants turned out to be nearly 1 lb. of cocaine, according to reports. Authorities at the Madrid airport in Spain noticed a passenger on a flight arriving from Costa Rica who had "a suspicious package between his legs," according to the official Twitter account of the national police. The man had tucked the drugs between boxers and another pair of underwear. He remains in custody for drug smuggling. (Twitter)

A Endeavor Air flight attendant allegedly stole 1,500 mini bottles of alcohol from flights she worked on and has since been charged with theft, unlawful sale of alcohol and unauthorized transportation of alcohol, according to the Associated Press. Endeavor Air is an affiliate of Delta. Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission investigators say Rachel Trevor sold the bottles for $1 each on Craigslist. (Getty Images)

Nearly 400 diamondback terrapin turtles have laid eggs and built nests in the area around New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. Some of the turtles wander into the paths of airplanes preparing to take off, disrupting some flights. The turtles' normal habitat is the nearby Jamaica Bay salt marshes. Get the full story here. (Getty Images)

A baby born on a plane operated by Philippines' Cebu Pacific airline in August 2016 is destined to become a global explorer after winning one million air points. The infant girl, dubbed Haven, was delivered by cabin crew on Cebu Pacific and two nurses on board the plane as it was en route from Dubai to Manila. To celebrate, the airline awarded the baby a million of its in-house loyalty points, which can be used for free travel on its flights and can be shared with Haven's family. (Getty Images)

Topics

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Malaysia Airlines on Wednesday lifted a much-criticized ban on checking in baggage on flights to Paris and Amsterdam, a day after limiting bags to lighten the plane and save fuel.

The airline had banned check-in baggage for Tuesday and Wednesday flights to the two European cities due to "unseasonably strong headwinds" on a longer flight path it was taking. Passengers slammed the airline on social media and suggested it could have reduced the number of passengers or refused to carry freight instead.

I've never, ever heard of a major airline telling passengers that they cannot check-in ANY baggage but Malaysia Airlines makes it a first!

The airline in an email to the AP said it does a daily risk assessment to determine the most optimum route for flights and that currently, it is taking "a more northerly route." It didn't elaborate.

A Malaysia Airlines jet flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down by a missile in eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 people on board. Earlier that year, a Malaysia Airlines flight heading to Beijing disappeared and is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean.